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Keeping the Kids Entertained

The entertainment bar is higher these days than it used to be in the pre-smartphone era. That’s true in general, of course, but I’m thinking specifically at the moment about kids on long car trips. Each may want his/her own entertainment, and with some new technology introduced this week by Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America, Inc., they’ll be able to have it in the relatively near future.

Mitsubishi introduced its FLEXConnect™ audio-video bridging system with an “Any Media on Any Screen” capability – multiple displays and multiple content streams.

Doug Ray, director, audio, video and communications, says FLEXConnect will “improve the overall experience for passengers who can now make individual choices about the entertainment and data they use, including media they bring into the vehicle.”

I suspect we’ll hear a lot more in the coming months about the automotive user (driver and passengers) experience.

“To keep pace with the consumer electronics market, infotainment system flexibility is crucial,” adds Gareth Williams, strategic technologies manager for audio, video and communications. “FLEXConnect takes advantage of the audio-video bridging architecture to ensure flexibility in the future. The current system enables several features that car manufacturers could implement in the near future, such as occupant recognition and distracted driving prevention.”

Current capabilities include an “any media on any screen” feature that allows sharing from one screen to another with a simple tap on the screen, and interactivity between screens, so passengers can play games or send photos back and forth.

Then there’ll be cameras installed above each rear seat so that someone in front, like a parent, can monitor rear seat occupants. They (the parent up front) will also be able to preview/override rear seat programming.

“The FLEXConnect infotainment system is perfect for families because it lets kids entertain themselves in rear seats, while parents have ultimate control of the kids’ entertainment,” says Ray. “It essentially eliminates the need to bring content into the vehicle on a disk. Passengers now control the content and the way it is displayed using paired devices and streaming.”

And then what? Mitsubishi is thinking about letting passengers choose a destination and send it to the vehicle’s navigation system. Also an occupant recognition capability that would allow each user to step into their own personal entertainment system with audio preferences, device defaults, and the like. And the ability to offload alerts from the head unit to a tablet that a front seat passenger can use to aid the driver, lessening the potential for distracted driving.

Life is becoming more sophisticated.

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John Day recently launched John Day’s Automotive Electronics News (johndayautomotivelectronics.com) to provide news and feature coverage of the automotive electronics industry. Earlier he wrote for Auto Electronics magazine, Auto E-lectronics, EE Times, and other business and engineering publications.
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